Being outdoors in the sunshine and heat was the perfect way to spend our May long weekend. Though camping over the long weekend was at the back of our minds for weeks leading up to it, we had made no specific plans. But when the sun woke us up in our Vancouver apartment on Saturday morning, we couldn't resist the call to spend the weekend outside. We packed our camping gear and hit the highway within about an hour after waking up. (I love that our camping gear is almost always in the "ready" state!) We weren't sure where we would end up, but I was interested in going through the Fraser Canyon along Highway 1 north of Hope.

After about 4 hours of driving through beautiful escarpment, we settled on a campsite along the Thompson River. The temperature had reached about 30 degrees, so we setup our tent quickly (with only few accidental barefoot steps onto the hot gravel) and sat in the sunshine overlooking the water.

The site was spectacular, with rushing water to watch, bears to observe, and passing train cars to count. We didn't even put the fly up, so we could look up at the stars through our tent's mesh roof.

We ended up finding the site quite loud and had difficultly sleeping, with the trains coming through at all hours, so the next morning we packed up and continued to head north along Highway 1, passing big horned sheep and deer along the way.

We eventually turned onto Hwy 99 and found another beautiful spot along the lake. The new spot was significantly quieter and calmer – the peace we were looking for!

We were able to take a walk around the lake, play tons of cribbage (Chris and I both managed to forget to pack our books in our haste to leave!), and watch the fish jumping in the lake.

On our way home on Monday, we stopped at Seton Lake for breakfast and a quick dip into the glacial waters. The lake was frigid and caused quite a bit of cold pain in our lower legs and feet, though both of us still went in twice.

By the time we got to Whistler, the roads were packed and I wished we were back in the quiet of the lake. We eventually made our way through traffic and over the Lions Gate bridge and spent the rest of the day on an outdoor patio.

The other evening Chris and I were sharing a few drinks in the Cactus Club lounge while the Canucks hockey game was on in the background. There was an aerial view of the Lions Gate Bridge shown before one of the commercial breaks, and I mentioned to Chris how much I loved that bridge. (To be clear, I love the way it looks. Sitting on it in traffic on the way home from Whistler on Sunday afternoon is not one of my favourite activities.) We started talking about how we've walked over bridges like the Golden Gate and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, when it occurred to us that we'd never walked over the bridge in our own backyard! We made plans to remedy that this coming Saturday.

This morning we set out on our urban hike from our apartment in Yaletown, down Robson Street, through Stanley Park, and over the Lions Gate Bridge. The walk was an adventure from the beginning, as we started our hike heading west on Robson while everyone else was going east towards the Whitecaps game. I felt a bit like a salmon swimming upstream. We also had to make our way through the Celtic Festival crowds in front of the Art Gallery and the meandering shoppers on Robson.

We don't get to Stanley Park very often - in fact, I've probably been there less than a dozen times since we moved to Vancouver 12 years ago. Walking through the tree covered paths past the lake and Lost Lagoon reminded me of how beautiful this urban space really was and that I should make an attempt to get here more often (after all, it's only about a 30 minute walk from my home).

While we were in Stanley Park, the sun came out for the first time in what felt like weeks! I got a little excited!

As we made our way towards the base of the Lions Gate Bridge, I started to get a bit nervous. The sidewalk was quite a bit narrower than other bridges I've crossed, the pedestrian area was shared with cyclists, and there was a rather larger than expected gap between the base of the sidewalk and the railing.

It was also quite the adrenaline rush though! Looking down at the cold water far below us, feeling the bridge shake from the traffic, and getting pushed by gusts of wind made the trek to North Van quite heart-pounding! Just as I was starting to acclimatise to being on the bridge, we were treated to the rush of a large container ship passing right underneath us. Looking down onto the ship, with all its shipping containers, bulk bins, and control towers so far below us gave me a view onto the ship I never had before.

When we finally made our way back over the bridge and returned to Stanley Park, we decided to try a different route home. We went by Prospect Point – an area in the park well known to tourists, but as a local, I had never actually been – and then made our way through the forest back to the lake, taking a quick break to chat with one of our friends who rode by on his bike, then headed back through the downtown jungle, getting home just as we were starting to get quite hungry.

This is the fourth part of my series about some of the different things we've seen in Australia. See Part 3 here. I may post one more after we get back that will include some of our most recent sightings - and who knows what we'll see in the next few days before we leave!

This is an Australian Brush-turkey, and we've seen a fair number of them on the east coast. They're pretty shy though, so my best picture is from far away even though we've been much closer to them.

At one of the caravan parks we stayed at these Plumed Whistling Ducks were everywhere, along with a few of the turkeys above and some Burdekin Ducks which I forgot to get a picture of!

I wish I had gotten a better pic of this Whimbrel who was walking on Alva Beach and that reminded me of the really weird looking Ibises we saw when we first got to Sydney.

For something different, this was our view while driving one stretch of the highway. We could probably smell smoke for about 45 minutes of the drive, and at points the visibility got really bad. At one point though, the sky became such an odd colour we had to take a picture.

We've been seeing lizards quite a bit on our trip, and we started noticing a lot of tiny ones on the coast. Karen is particularly good at spotting them! I haven't been good at getting pictures of them though!

You might remember us seeing Water Dragons in Sydney a little over a month ago. Well, in Kempsey, behind the Moon River motel, there was a beautiful river - actually the Macleay River - teeming with life, and I was finding these awesome looking lizards everywhere I looked. (And I think they found me pretty interesting to look at, too!)

There were plenty of flowers to be seen along the shore as well, including a flowering pumpkin plant.

While I was standing there seeking out more dragons, I heard quite a large splash out towards the middle of the river. At first I thought it might be someone fishing (I had spoken to a fisherman a couple of minutes before about the spiny, poisonous fish he had caught) but then I noticed the rings from where something had splashed. Maybe a big fish had jumped? Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a fin! A shark? A dolphin!? I continued to watch, scanning the water for movement, and sure enough a dolphin emerged for a quick breath. It was too quick for me to catch a photo, but I captured a glimpse on video after a few tries!

It felt pretty spectacular to have seen so much in such a short time by the river. I had to take one last look back at the river before leaving.

This is the third part of my series of blog posts recapping things we've discovered on our trip. See Part 2 here.

The first thing I'll mention is these trees that we first saw in New Zealand on Waiheke island, but we're seeing again along Australia's coast. The first one we saw, pictured here, was just massive and really stood out to us. They are Norfolk Island Pines, but it's not surprising that another common name for them is "living Christmas tree."

Karen mentioned in an earlier blog post about Magnetic Island that we saw a number of creatures there. We saw the koala there, and the wedge-tailed eagle I showed in Part 2. The island came alive again for us when we were finished our hike and lunch, but we didn't want to leave right away. We decided to take a walk around the shore for a bit to see the ocean views. We started down a path that looked like it would take us around, but ended up not going very far and ending at a breakwater, with a little closed off area with benches. The views were beautiful, so we spent some time looking out over the bay. Suddenly, I spotted some movement out of the corner of my eye, and discovered a Rock-wallaby no more than 10 metres from us among the rocks of the breakwater. We soon realized there were many more and one of them came right up to us, probably looking for food.

After spending some time with Willoughby the wallaby, we found a raised sidewalk along a road up over a cliff to continue along the shoreline. It had some pullouts to take a rest in, the first of which made a great viewing platform as well. We looked down at the cliffs below us and we saw a perched White-bellied Sea Eagle, which we had just read about earlier in the day.

We were just turning away when Karen looked back and exclaimed that the eagle had taken off. I was snapping pics when we realized it had caught something: a snake that was thrashing in its talons!

If you look closely at the first photo of the eagle, it looks like it already had its prey while it was perched. A few seconds later, another eagle soared past us.

After we had walked a fair distance along the shore, we decided to take a bus back to the ferry terminal (we had a day pass after all!) While waiting at the stop, we saw two interesting species of ant. The first I noticed looked weird because of the way it moved, which I can't really show with a picture. It was almost like it had a low framerate and network lag and moved along in quick jumps along the ground, sudden direction changes and strange pauses. The other species was the Green Tree Ant or Weaver Ant, which I have now seen many times along the coast.

There's only a week left in our trip, but hopefully I'll have enough content for a Part 4!